The first congestion pricing scheme in the US brings a dramatic drop in traffic in New York

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New Yorkers are cruising much faster on Manhattan’s bridges and tunnels since the city implemented its long-debated congestion pricing plan earlier this month, according to newly available traffic data.

The morning rush hour speed from New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel, the main route under the Hudson River to Manhattan, nearly doubled to 28 mph compared to a year earlier. The evening speed across the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn increased from 13 to 23 mph.

If these trends continue, motorists willing to pay a toll of $4.50 to $14.40 to enter a congestion zone in the center of America’s busiest city will save thousands of hours a year that they currently waste crawling through smoggy tunnels or over congested bridges.

New York City’s congestion pricing scheme, which went into effect on January 5, is supposed to reduce traffic and help fund a much-needed $15 billion improvements to local mass transportation.

The toll applies to vehicles entering the “congestion zone” below 60th Street in Manhattan, a section of the island that includes Midtown, Greenwich Village, SoHo and the area around Wall Street. Most cars entering the zone now pay a $9 toll, while trucks pay $14.40 and motorcycles $4.50. Some cars, including emergency vehicles, are exempt.

The scheme means New York joins London, Milan, Singapore and Stockholm in a small club of big cities with congestion pricing. Traffic in London, which introduced its program in 2003. fell by 14 percent in its zone in the first year. Other cities saw declines of more than 20 percent.

Increase in New York The speeds are shown in data provided to the Financial Times by traffic monitoring firm Inrix, which was collected from anonymized GPS in vehicles, mobile devices and sensors on the road. The data contains speeds on different routes around the city, at different times of the day, before and after the start of charging.

“Luckily, Manhattan has very few access points, and they’re limited to bridges and tunnels, so you can really feel what’s going on,” said Inrix analyst Bob Pishue.

Of the eight bridges and tunnels tested, seven experienced significant acceleration in at least one rush hour. The three Manhattan-bound bridges that are not connected to the congestion zone did not experience a similar increase in speed.

An FT analysis of hourly traffic data by New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority also found fewer vehicles in the affected tunnels during peak hours. Bridges and tunnels outside the zone carried more vehicles.

AND report this week from the MTA also showed a significant drop in travel times, including 30-40 percent for vehicles entering the Manhattan business district. It was also found that city buses moved faster and that their number of passengers was slightly higher.

According to the Congestion Pricing Tracker, a project by student brothers Benjamin and Joshua Moshes that tracks commute times via Google Maps, peak times through the Netherlands Tunnel have dropped from 20 minutes before tolling to nine minutes this week.

“We’re pretty confident that we’re seeing really big shifts on those bridges and tunnels that lead into the congestion zone,” said Benjamin Moshes.

Lewis Lehe, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, found that drivers in other cities with congestion pricing respond more dramatically to the introduction of tolls than to subsequent price increases — an idea he calls “great elasticity during introduction“.

Lehe was “stunned” by the magnitude of the effects shown in the first data from New York, but cautioned that it will take time to fully understand the effects of the new tolls.

At 5 p.m. on a recent weekday near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel in lower Manhattan, only one car was waiting at a traffic light that until recently was jammed with blocks. The cheeky crossing guards guarding the intersection have disappeared. Speeds through the tunnel increased by almost 50 percent.